Do people with autistic spectrum disorder show normal selection for attention? Evidence from change blindness
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People in the general population are typically very poor at detecting changes in pictures of complex scenes. The degree of this 'change blindness', however, varies with the content of the scene: when an object is semantically important or contextually inappropriate, people may be more effective at detecting changes. Two experiments investigated change blindness in people with autism, who are known from previous research to be efficient in detecting features yet poor at processing stimuli for meaning and context. The first experiment measured the effect of semantic information while the second investigated the role of context in directing attention. In each task, participants detected the dissimilarity between pairs of images. Both groups showed a main effect of image type in both experimental tasks, showing that their attention was directed to semantically meaningful and contextually inappropriate items. However, the autistic group also showed a greater difficulty detecting changes to semantically marginal items in the first experiment. Conclusions point to a normal selection of items for attention in people with autism spectrum disorders, although this may be combined with difficulty switching or disengaging attention.
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Fletcher-Watson et al. (2006) reported no differences in performance between adults with autism and typical adults in a change-detection task.
“However, Fletcher-Watson, Leekam, Turner, and Moxon (2006) reported no differences in performance between adults with autism and typical adults in a change-detection task.”
From Vision in autism spectrum disorders (2009) · cites this paper as Fletcher-Watson et al. (2006)
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- Authors
- Fletcher‐Watson, S., Leekam, S. R., Turner, M. A., & Moxon, L.
- Affiliations
- Durham University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Fletcher‐Watson, S.
- Venue
- British Journal of Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2006-11
- Volume
- 97
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 537-554
- ISSN
- 0007-1269 (ISSN-L)
- 2044-8295
- OpenAlex
- W2108573190
- Cited by
- 47
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 2.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- British Journal of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion)
- Newcastle University ePrints (Newcastle Univesity)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, change blindness, selective attention, semantic information, attentional shift, scene change detection, visual attention
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Attention, Autistic Disorder, Discrimination Learning, Female, Humans, Male, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Reference Values, Semantics, Comprehension
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